Charles Fourier

Charles Fourier was an eccentric French theorist who considered civilization repressive and destructive of human happiness and that capitalism, especially the system of industrial wage labour, destroyed the essential goodness of human nature. He believed socialism to be the community of all classes and experimented with model communities to liberate the human spirit, although none survived very long. These communities would be limited in size and characterized by rigid occupational balance, and share all labour and produce of agricultural and industrial pursuits. Fourier abolished marriage in his planned communities and called for sexual freedom with partnerships based on love within the puritanical sexual morality of the nineteenth century. He wanted a society in which everyone would be free to do what they wanted, while at the same time, working for the common good. He felt that work should be pleasurable, with people changing their jobs as often as they desired in order to prevent boredom. Fourier thought children should learn about what they may be interested in and housework should be communally organized so as to liberate women. Fourier’s stated of his new order: "People possess a guarantee of well-being, of a minimum sufficient for the present and future, and that this would guarantee freedom from uneasiness concerning themselves and their families."  Fourier's ideas, and the fact that many socialist men and women put them into practice, made socialists dangerous on moral as well as political grounds.